A 3-D Lighting and Shadow Analysis of the

JFK Zapruder Film (Frame 317)

Hany Farid

Department of Computer Science6211 Sudikoff LabDartmouth CollegeHanover NH 03755603.646.2761 (tel)603.646.1672 (fax)

farid@cs.dartmouth.edu

Abstract

Claims of a broader conspiracy behind U.S. President John F. Kennedy’sassassination have persisted for the past nearly five decades. The Zapruderfilm is considered to be the most complete recording of JFK’s assassination.Many have claimed that this 8mm film was manipulated to conceal evidenceof a second shooter, which would invalidate the claim that a lone gunman,Lee Harvey Oswald, was responsible for JFK’s assassination. Here we con-sider the viability of one specific claim of postproduction tampering in theZapruder film.

1. Introduction

United States President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November22nd, 1963 while his procession was driving through Dealey Plaza in Dallas,Texas. Shortly afterwards, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged withthe crime. Because he was killed before his trial, and the conclusions of theWarren Commission[1] have been challenged, many questions surroundingthe assassination remained unanswered. Since this time, numerous theorieshave circulated suggesting that Oswald acted as part of a larger criminal con-spiracy involving a variety of government, international, or criminal groups.

Abraham Zapruder captured the most complete documentation of theevents of November 22nd with his Bell & Howell 8mm roll film camera. After

Figure 1: Frame 317 of the Zapruder film (left), and a magnified view of JFK – theauthenticity of the shadow on the back of JFK’s head has been called into question.

its public release in 1975, challenges to the authenticity of the Zapruder filmbegan to surface (e.g., [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]). The Zapruder film has been analyzedfor evidence to support alternate theories of who and how many people wereinvolved in the assassination. For example, it has been argued that on frame317 (and neighboring frames) what appears to be a shadow on the back ofJFK’s head, Figure 1, is the result of tampering, purportedly to concealevidence of a shot exiting through the rear of JFK’s head. This shot couldonly have come from a second shooter, as Oswald was positioned behindJFK.

Here I describe a 3-D photo forensic examination that allows for a geo-metric analysis of the lighting and shadows in frame 317 to determine if theshadow on the back of JFK’s head is consistent with the scene geometry andillumination.

2. 3-D Model

We digitally recreate portions of the scene depicted in frame 317 of theZapruder film, Figure 1. This requires the construction of a 3-D model ofJFK’s head and body, the geometry of the street on which JFK’s car wastraveling (Elm St.), and the position of the sun.

2.1. JFK

In [10], the authors describe a 3-D morphable model for the analysis andsynthesis of human faces. The model was derived by collecting a large set of

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Figure 2: Profile and frontal views of JFK. See also Figure 3.

Figure 3: Shown from left to right are three views of the estimated 3-D model of JFK,and the 3-D model with skin color and hair. See also Figure 2.

3-D laser scanned faces and projecting them into a lower-dimensional linearsubspace. New faces (geometry, texture/color, and expressions) are modeledas linear combinations of the resulting low-parameter linear basis. The modelparameters can be estimated from a paired profile(s) and frontal image.

Shown in Figure 2 are left and right profile and frontal views of JFK.These photographs provide the input for constructing a 3-D model froma commercially available implementation of techniques similar to those de-scribed in [10] (FaceGen, Singular Inversions). Three views of the resultingestimated 3-D model show a good agreement with the original photos, Fig-ure 3. Also shown in the right-most panel of Figure 3 is the estimated 3-Dmodel with the addition of skin tone and a generic wig, added to bettermodel the shape of JFK’s head.

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Figure 4: Shown on the left is JFK in frame 317 and shown on the right is our 3-D model(illuminated with only ambient lighting).

This 3-D head model was combined with a generic1 articulated 3-D body2,and rendered in the 3-D modeling software Maya (Autodesk). Shown inFigure 4 is a rendering of the combined 3-D head and body, positioned to beconsistent with JFK’s body/head pose in frame 317.

2.2. Elm Street

At the time of his assassination, JFK’s car was traveling on Elm St. inDealey Plaza, Figure 5 (top panel). We are interested in analyzing lightingand shadows, and therefore need to know the angle between people andobjects in the scene and the sun. As such, it is important to determine if,and by how much, Elm St. is angled relative to the horizontal plane.

Shown in Figure 5 (bottom panel) is a digital elevation map (DEM) ob-tained from airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), courtesy of theNational Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The color coding corresponds ele-vation with red denoting the highest elevation and blue the lowest elevation.The long straight portion of Elm St. is 50 meters in length, and the differ-ence in elevation across this distance is 2.75 meters, yielding an angle of 3.2◦.That is, JFK’s car was pitched 3.2◦ downward as it was traveling along Elm

1A more detailed body was not constructed (e.g., [11]), because we were primarilyinterested in the shadow on the head, for which a generic body sufficed.

2Alfred 1.2.0: www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/alfred

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50 meters

Figure 5: An aerial map of Dealey Plaza (top), and a digital elevation map (DEM) ofthis area (bottom). The color coding corresponds elevation with red denoting the highestelevation and blue the lowest elevation.

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St. As such, the road was modeled as a planar surface angled by this amountrelative to horizontal.

2.3. Light

JFK was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963 at 18:30 (UTC) in DealeyPlaza. It is an easy matter to determine the relative position of the lightat this time and place. Specifically, the location of Dealey plaza is givenby 32◦ 46′ 43′′ N and 96◦ 48′ 30′′ W. According to the National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administration solar calculator, the sun’s position (spec-ified as azimuth and elevation3) at this location and date was 181.91◦ 37◦,respectively.

2.4. Summary

We now have at our disposal a 3-D model of JFK’s head and body, a3-D model of Elm St., and the 3-D position of the sun at the time of JFK’sassassination. These models were combined using the 3-D modeling softwareMaya. A virtual camera was positioned where Abraham Zapruder was stand-ing with his 8mm movie camera. The pedestrian on the grass and the policeofficer’s helmet were modeled with simple geometric primitives in order tovalidate the estimated 3-D sun position and 3-D scene geometry. The nextsection describes a lighting and shadow analysis from this 3-D model.

3. 3-D Analysis

Shown in Figure 6 is the 3-D rendering of the models described in theprevious section. The top and bottom panels show the rendered image su-perimposed (with different opacities) on top of the original frame. This wasdone in order to see the details of the rendering as well as the relative align-ment with the original photo. First, note that the length and angle of thecast shadow of the pedestrian onto the ground is the same as in the originalphoto. This shows that the 3-D model of the ground plane and sun posi-tion are correct. Notice also that the lighting gradient on the police officer’shelmet is consistent with the original photo.

Shown in Figure 7 is a magnified view of JFK. This 3-D rendering reveals,as with the original photo, a shadow on the back of JFK’s head. In addition,

3Azimuth is measured clockwise from true north to a point on the horizon directlybelow the sun. Elevation is measured vertically from this point to the position of the sun.

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Figure 6: The rendered 3-D scene superimposed on top of the original frame 317 (Figure 1)with 80% and 20% opacity. See also Figure 7.

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Figure 7: The original and 3-D rendering of JFK on frame 317. Note the consistency inthe shadows on his head and body. See also Figure 6.

the lighting gradients on his shoulder and arm are consistent with the originalphoto. The slight differences in the precise shape of the shadow on the backof the head are due to differences in the underlying 3-D shape of the hair,which are difficult to precisely model.

We note that the original photo clearly shows a shadow on JFK’s rightcheek which is not reproduced in our 3-D reconstruction. This shadow is dueto the damage inflicted to JFK’s right temple which is casting a shadow ontohis face.

The lighting and shadows in frame 317 of the Zapruder film are consistentwith the 3-D geometry of the scene and sun position. It has been argued thatthe darkening on the back of JFK’s head is not a shadow. Such claims arenot supported by this 3-D photo analysis.

4. Discussion

We have described a 3-D photo forensic analysis of the historic, and attimes controversial, Zapruder film. This analysis focuses specifically on frame317, and the shadow on the back of JFK’s head. This analysis shows that theshadow, which some have argued is the result of manipulation, is consistentwith the 3-D geometry of the scene and position of the sun. While this doesnot, of course, prove that the 8mm original film has not been altered, it doesprove that the shadow is physically plausible.

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References

[1] United States, The official Warren Commission report on the assassi-nation of President John F. Kennedy, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y.,1964.

[2] R. Groden, The Killing of a President: The Complete PhotographicRecord of the Assassination, the Conspiracy, and The Cover-Up, Pen-guin Books, 1994.

[3] N. Twyman, Bloody Treason: On Solving History’s Greatest MurderMystery : The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Laurel Publishing,1997.

[4] J. Fetzer, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in theDeath of JFK, Catfeet Press, 2003.

[5] H. E. Livingstone, The Hoax of the Century: Decoding the Forgery ofthe Zapruder Film, Trafford Publishing, 2004.

[6] D. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S.Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evi-dence in the Assassination of JFK (Volume 4), 2009.

[7] H. Farid, The Lee Harvey Oswald backyard photos: Real or fake?, Per-ception 11 (38) (2009) 1731–1734.

[8] H. Farid, A 3-D photo forensic analysis of the Lee Harvey Oswald back-yard photo, Tech. Rep. TR2010-669, Department of Computer Science,Dartmouth College (2010).

[9] United States, Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of theU.S. House of Representatives (1979).

[10] V. Blanz, T. Vetter, A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces,in: SIGGRAPH, Computer Graphics Proceedings, Los Angeles, 1999,pp. 187–194.

[11] P. Guan, A. Weiss, A. Balan, M. Black, Estimating human shape andpose from a single image, in: International Conference on ComputerVision, Kyoto, Japan, 2009.

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